Stone Over Moon
by Konsui's Little Brother
Summary: It started as a simple story, a way for Sokka to explain what the full-moon was to Toph, but it ends being so much more. Yet...Will he really choose the Stone over the Moon?


A/N: This was a Christmas gift for one of my very good friends, Xkoon, I hope you all like it as much as she did!

* * *

"Well, it's big. And it's round, too, well, some of the time at least." Sokka held his arms out in front of him, hands forming a circular shape, before he just started moving them around again. "It's pretty bright. Not like the sun but it's a lot brighter than the stars. And...it's kind of yellow looking."

Beside him, from her perch on the cliff's edge, Toph rolled her eyes. Her hands, both palm-flat on the ground, shifted slightly so that she could lean back on them while her feet dangled off the cliff and over the ocean. "Sokka, just stop now. I was just wondering because it was supposed to be a Full Moon and I wanted to know what every one was going on about."

Sokka's hands dropped down to his side as he stared down at the girl; first a look of confusion and then a look of frustrated realization settling on his face. Of course what he was saying hadn't made any sense to Toph. Half the words that he'd been using to describe the moon weren't even things that she understood. Bright and yellow didn't mean anything to the fighter-girl. But that didn't mean that he was about to give up. He couldn't give up on this.

"Hang on, let me try something else." Ignoring the lavender-eyed girl's protests, telling him that he was just being stupid now, Sokka went about rooting through the leaves and pebbles on the ground. It took a few minutes, in which Toph had finally fallen silent with her complaints, but he eventually found what he was looking for.

A small, perfectly round stone. The color, a plain charcoal black, didn't matter at the moment. He had just needed one with this shape. Sokka walked back over to Toph and sat down next to her. Not plopped, not dropped; sat.

"Sokka, what on Earth are you-Hey!" A rather indignant yelp left her lips as Sokka grabbed one of her hands, something small and cold being shoved into it. The man next to her wrapped her fingers around the object, a rock she thought, before settling into a position similar to how she had been sitting.

"Feel that. See how round it is? That's the shape the moon is in right now." Sokka wasn't really sure where he was going with this but he had to give it a try. And if she still didn't get the moon after this, there was only one other way that he could explain it to her.

"Okay...now the rest of it." He paused for a moment, his mind going over the best way to word what he wanted to get across, before Sokka started to speak again. "I know you don't get bright and yellow but...I guess the only other way to describe it would be...Well, bright is sort of like that happy-glowy feeling inside you when something goes right. And yellow, well, yellow's bright."

Toph raised one eyebrow as the water-tribe boy beside her stumbled over his own words. She guessed that it sort of made sense when you worded it as a feeling, though he just sounded dumb doing it, but she honestly didn't care all that much. If it wasn't for the fact that Sokka seemed so determined to make her understadn (she could feel it in the energy he was giving off; the way his heart was beating and how all of his muscels would tense and twitch), she'd have interrupted him and gone back to the camp by now. As it was, she just sat there and let him ramble for a bit longer.

"-isn't making any sense either, is it?" Sokka sighed and looked out at the ocean. Waves were rising up high, their white crests stark against the blackness of the sky above them, before crashing down against the rock at his and Toph's feet. Spray from the ocean was misting their legs, the bottoms of Sokka's pants getting steadily wetter the longer he sat there.

He hadn't wanted it to come down to this but he was determined to get Toph to understand the beauty of the moon and what it meant to the other members of their rag-tag team. Even if it meant telling her the story that hurt him, made his heart ache and his eyes sting and water, to even think about. "Have you ever heard the story of the Moon Princess, Toph?"

"Yeah, a few times. She was a water nation princess that turned into the moon right? Because she fell in love with the ocean?" Something about that didn't seem right and, even if she didn't already know that, the sudden erratic jolting of Sokka's heart told her that.

Toph had never paid much attention to her lessons back when she lived in the Bei Fong Mannor. Especially not silly little legends like that one. Really, a women turning into a globe of light because she fell in love with a bunch of water? It was just rediculous. Completely unbelievable. And it definatly didn't have anything to do with how the moon looked. That she was sure.

"No." He didn't expect his voice to come out so terse sounding (but what Toph had said was so wrong) and Sokka had to force himself to come down, blowing air out of his nose as he did so, before he once more started to speak. "Well, sort of. I mean, you've got the basics, I guess, but that's not the real story."

And Sokka would know. He knew the story, the real story, better than any one but the Moon Princess herself. He'd lived through it after all.

"The real story starts way before any of us were born. Back before the first Avatar and when all the spirit's ruled the lands. There was a woman named Ra and a man named La. The spirits of the moon and the ocean, yin and yang, light and dark. And they were in love. Maddly-" His voice hitched here slightly but he pushed on. "-and deeply in love."

"But there was a fight. A war between the spirits and the humans. And while La moved on to the Spirit Realm to rule over the ocean without us humans messing up what he had to do, Ra was killed before she could join her love. Before she died though, with her last breath, she promised that, when the time came, her spirit would join La's in the Other Realm. Right there, in La's arms, her body turned into that of a golden and white koi fish; one larger than any seen before. And La changed his shape, giving up a position in the Heavens, to match that of Ra's so the two could remain together."

"The two spirits, in the form of large koi fish, were placed into the Spirit Oasis in the North Pole. They were worshipped like Gods there; people even asked for their blessings and help for the simplest of things. And the water that they swam in was magical." Sokka was interrupted by a snort here, the girl beside him clearly not buying what he was saying.

He narrowed his eyes into a glare but didn't let her interruption stop him from telling the story. He had started it and now he was going to finish it. And it was going to be finished right, dang it! "The water was blessed with a healing power, Toph. That's closer to magic than your silly bending."

The glare was returned, though she was slightly off in where his head was, but Sokka wasn't paying that much attention to her any more. No, he'd tilted his head back and was staring up at the moon with a wistful look on his face.

"That's where the story you probably heard gets it's start at. See, the leader of the Northern Water-Tribe, Chief Anshu, is the reason that the story got started. His wife died giving birth to their only child, a beautiful baby girl. And she just got more gorgeus as she grew up. With long white hair and the palest blue eyes that any one ever saw. And they named her Yue. Princess Yue."

He could see the woman he was speaking about now. Her snow-colored tresses pulled back away from her face, ornate porcelain chop-sticks pushed into the bun on the top of her head, just as they had been the first time that Sokka met her. And her pale, pale, blue eyes that seemed to glow; the same color that he'd looked up and seen so many times in the Northern Lights during his stay there. Yes, her image would be forever burned into his mind; a permanent reminder of his first real love. And he felt his heart start to ache like it always did when he said her name. But he kept going,

"But the Princess was very sick from the moment that she was born. Chief Anshu spent all of the free-time that he had by his daughters bed-side so that he would be there when her sickness finally started to take her. And he was. He-"

"So she died? That early in the story?" Toph interrupted. Her old mentors had never been this good at telling a story, even one for learning purposes, so she'd never paid attention to them. Sokka on the other hand seemed to have a knack for telling a story. Or maybe it was just this story. His breathing and heart-rate kept hitching when he spoke.

"No! Not yet, at least. Just listen to the story, Toph." Sokka brushed a stray spatter of sea-water off of his face before going back to staring at the ocean waves.

"Her dad was terrified. Yue was all that he had left and he didn't want to lose her. So he scooped her into his arms and took off down the streets. It was night so no one was in his way and no one could try and talk him out of it. The two reached the Spirit Oasis in record time. Crouching down by the pool of water, Anshu begged the spirits to save his daughter. And Ra answered him. He had his daughter drink from the pool and she was saved. In return, though, Yue would forever be in the spirit's debt."

"On her sixteenth birthday, a group of travellers came into her village. A monk, a warrior, and a healer; just from the South Pole. The monk was there to find a teacher, as was the healer, and Cheif Anshu and his daughter welcomed them into their city with open arms. And the moment that the warrior saw Yue, he fell in love with her."

"But their love wasn't meant to be. See, the Fire-Nation invaded her town. They had heard about the Spirit Oasis and they wanted it's powers for themselves." They had also wanted Aang, the monk in his story, but Sokka wasn't about to say that right now. It would ruin everything.

"Sometime during the fighting, a small group of Fire Nation managed to get into the Oasis, and the koi that held Ra's spirit was killed." His eyes slid closed as the memories hit him. "La went absolutely insane. He was still in the form of the koi, stuck now because his rage was keeping him from changing, but he grew. And he didn't stop growing. He was a monster of a fish. And he was out for revenge."

"The oceans rose up. Waves crashed down onto the city. The raid was over and the Fire-Nation were trying to flee. La chased them and he tried to destroy them. And in the middle of it all was the Water Tribe princess. See, Toph, because she was blessed by the moon spirit...Her life was touched by Ra and a part of the spirit's life was inside of her."

He paused, eyes sliding shut, and took a deep breath. Then he plunged right back into the story. It was almost over after all. He could tell a bit more. "Yue knew that and she knew that giving her life up was the only way to revive Ra. But the warrior didn't want her to. He tried to tell her that they would find another way to calm La but she wouldn't listen. It was her duty, she said, to protect her city and her people. To protect him."

"So she walked out onto a bridge in the middle of town, the same bridge that they had first met on and where she had first kissed him, and she held her arms up to the clouded moon." Really the moon had been a blood-red but that wouldn't have made as much sense to Toph. And since he had already tweaked the names out of the story, he didn't see why he couldn't change that bit.

"And then there was a flash of light and she was falling to the ground. The warrior caught her though. He had been trying to catch her, to stop her, but he'd been too late. So he wrapped his arms around the princess and held her close to him. Don't leave me, he begged, don't leave me Yue. But she was already fading." Sokka could feel tears pricking at the corners of his eyes now.

"And she put a hand on his arm. Goodbye my warrior, she whispered to him, I'll always be with you. And when her eyes slipped shut, the clouds over the moon cleared and the waves calmed. La returned himself to the Spirit Oasis where Ra was once again swimming. And everyone but the warrior was happy."

A heavy silence settled over the two. With every word in that last part of the story, Toph had heard Sokka's breathing grow heavy and his heart rate drop. She had heard the pain and the misery that was there, hidden behind the words, that she could only hear using th epulses she felt through the ground.

And then Sokka was laughing nervously and pushing himself up. "Sorry, Toph. I-I know that was pretty lame but it was all that I could think of to explain. Maybe you could get Katara to explain it to you better?" And then he was rushing away, foot-steps quick even though he was trying to act casual.

Toph bit her bottom lip and closed her hand around the stone that Sokka had given her at the beggining of the story. She still didn't quite know what the moon looked like, and she knew that she never would, but somehow that story had helped her. She had a better grasp at least of why it inspired such hope in the rest of her companions. And it also seemed, Toph couldn't help but think, that it had meant much more to Sokka than he had told her.

As she stood up, feet dragging on the ground when she started following Sokka back in the direction of their camp, Toph placed the stone into her pocket.

And if Sokka ever asked her what happened to it, which she doubted would happen, she would say that she threw it into the ocean after he had left. It was just a stone right? Nothing more than that?

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

It was the morning after Sokka told her the story, the one about the warrior and the moon spirit, when Toph emerged from her tent. She paused outside of it, pulses in the ground telling her that everyone else was still curled up asleep in their proper tents, before she started to pad across the camp-site.

Some how she hadn't thought of it until that morning. It had kept her up all night, tossing and turning and thinking, but she hadn't figured out why until just then.

It had seemed to her that Sokka had left something crucial out of the story. A certain bit of information that meant more than he was letting on. And then she realized that, not only had he left the name of the warrior out of the story, but he'd put something in that he shouldn't have known.

He'd told her what the warrior had whispered to Yue, and in return, what Yue's last words to him had been.

She brushed back the flap of the tent, taking a few steps inside, and let it fall back behind her. Across from her, she could feel that Sokka was sitting on his sleeping bag. Pulling on boots by the feel of it and, now, giving her an odd look.

"It was you, wasn't it?" Toph demanded.

"What are you talking about, Toph?" Sokka tilted his head to the side slightly, frown deepening. He finished pulling his boot on as Toph walked further into his tent, both her hands on her hip.

"I'm talking about the story last night. With the princess. You were the warrior there, weren't you Snoozles?" How she hadn't noticed it last night was beyond her. But judging from the way Sokka's heart had just skipped a beat, it was now jumping erratically in his chest, she guessed that he had been hoping she wouldn't figure it out.

Sighing, Sokka leaned back on his sleep roll. He figured that Toph would have figured it out over night. She hadn't even given him time to think up a good reason for it to not be him. There wasn't any way that he could not answer her though. She'd kill him, literally, for ignoring her. "...Yeah. Yeah, Toph. It was me."

And, even though she had been expecting him to answer it that way, she couldn't help but still feel shocked. Knowing that Sokka, her Snoozles, had been in love with the spirit of the moon. It would have shocked anyone, right? But she could tell that he wasn't lieing. His heart told her that much.

She took a step foreward, the slightest bit nervous, before deciding that there was nothing for her to be nervous about. It was just Sokka. Rolling her shoulders back slightly, Toph dropped herself onto the ground next to the Water Tribe warrior. "So are you gonna tell me about her?"

Sokka blinked, before looking up towards the top of his tent. A wistful expression crossed his face as he started to talk. "Tell you about her? Well, she was everything that I told you in the story. Everything there and more. Kind and caring. Brave. She didn't even pause when she realized that her...her death...would bring Ra back to life. She just headed towards the bridge."

"Yue was amazing Toph. She gave everyone the chance that they wanted. The chance they needed. Made everyone feel special." Even him. She'd given him the chance to make her happy, even when there were so many better people in her village. Benders, royalty, real warriors with real muscles, even the Avatar was there. But she'd chosen him.

"And...She was the second most beautiful women I've ever met." A small smile settled on his face then. He pulled his eyes away from the top of the tent, turning them instead onto the Earth Bender at his side.

There was a silence after that. Sokka didn't have much to say; nothing to say really. Toph was too busy mulling over Sokka's words to say anything right away. And just when she was ready to speak again, to ask him who the first prettiest girl was, there was a call from the outside.

"Guys! Hurry up! We have to go! The Fire Nation's here!"

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

Sokka ducked, a thick blade flying over his head, and slid in between two Fire-Nation soldiers. The hilt of his Space-Rock sword met the helmet of one; the soldier stumbled a step before hitting the ground. His elbow met the gut of the other soldier; this one stayed up but not for long.

A large tremor shot through the ground, small lattice-work cracks forming in the rocky earth, and more than one soldier lost their footing and tumbled down. Several of them, including the one in front of Sokka, stayed down.

There wasn't any time for the Water-Tribe boy to look for the bender-girl that had taken them down for him, not that he would have been able to find her in the middle of the devastation, before he was flung back into the battle. A burst of flame whizzed by his ear, the smell of burning hair and skin met his nose, and he was moving again.

Duck.

Slash.

Dodge.

Swipe.

Pain.

Retaliate.

Blood.

Kill.

His dark blue clothes were stained with crimson liqued but he wasn't sure whether it was mostly his own or his enemies. Probably both, if the pain shooting up and down his thigh was anything to go by.

There was a lull in the fighting. All of the Fire-Nation warriors were either dead, unconscious, or had retreated to get back-up. There was no doubt that was where they had gone and that they would be back any moment now. There was always a second wave when the red-clad warriors caught wind of where Aang was at.

Which, at the moment, was somewhere off with Katara and Zuko.

The five fighters had been seperated when they were attacked. Zuko, Katara, and Aang had dissapeared somewhere in the nearby woods. No doubt they had all taken off towards the village of Mishu, which was where they were heading the day before. Toph and Sokka were supposed to go with them, they'd even been called to before their companions left, but they hadn't made it. Toph had practically been in the middle of the ambush, unable to leave, and Sokka had stayed behind to help her.

He wiped the blade of his sword off on his pants leg before shoving it back into it's sheath, which was on his back next to Boomerang, and looking around for the missing Earth-Bender. It didn't take long to spot her. She was the only short, brown-haired girl in the clearing after all.

He limped his way over to her, doing his best to walk normally because he knew that if he didn't she'd be able to sense every stupid little injury that he had, only to find that she wasn't looking at him. She wasn't even standing up any more. Instead, the young girl had dropped herself unceremoniously on the ground and pulled one foot into her lap.

"Toph? You okay?" A frown creased Sokka's face, brow furrowing, and a trickle of red slid down beside his eye. He didn't like the way she was sitting.

There was silence for a moment and then, "No, I'm not."

And that caught Sokka off guard. Toph never admitted that she wasn't fine. She was the Unbreakable Toph, and you paid if you forgot it, always fine. If Katara didn't force her to sit down after every fight, the brunette would never let his sister heal her. So her not being 'fine' was a bad thing. A very bad thing. Made even worse by the fact that Katara, who was the one that healed everyone, wasn't there. "What do you mean you're 'not'?"

"I mean that I can't see anything!" Toph snapped at him. There was silence for a moment after that and, with her scowl deepening, she switched so it was her other foot pulled into her lap. "I mean, I can't feel anything. Something happened to my feet."

Worried frown breaking his own face, Sokka knelt down beside the prone girl so that he could get a good look at her feet. The soles of both feet were burnt. The skin was a polished red color, large blisters forming on the skin, and he could feel the waves of heat coming off of them.

"How on Earth did you manage to burn the bottoms of your feet?"

-0-0-0-0-

"So...Snoozles." Toph tightened the grip she had around Sokka's waist, pushed a little more of her weight on him, and waited for him to answer her.

"What? Am I still going to fast?" Sokka slowed himself down as he spoke, the small frown on his face growing a little bigger.

Toph was putting most of her weight on him, one arm wrapped around his waist and the other gripping his arm, as they walked. He had offered to carry the younger girl, which had resulted with him being punched hard in the arm, but he'd managed to talk Toph into leaning on him. It wasn't like she could tell where she was going right now anyways.

"Nah, you're not. I just-never mind." Toph tilted her head down slightly.

"Uh-uh. You aren't getting out of it now, Toph. What were you going to ask?" Sokka glanced down at Toph before going back to looking around for more Fire-Nation soldiers. He didn't want to bump into any more of them now that Toph was out of commition. It was hard enough just taking care of himself during the fights. This thought brought another jolt of pain shooting up through his leg and into his back.

There was silence for a few moments before Toph let out a small, muttered, "It was stupid. Just forget it, Snoozles."

Pursing his lips together, Sokka shook his head. "It's not stupid if you thought of it, Toph."

Another silence. "Well, I was just wondering...Before...You said that Yue-girl was the second prettiest person you'd met. I wanted to know who the first was. Could you...Would you tell me about her?"

If Sokka didn't think that Toph would take it the wrong way, he would have started laughing right then. Knowing Toph though, she would have thought he was laughing at her question. And, not only would that be painful, but it would certaintly not work well in his favor.

"Let's see..." He would have thought that the Earth-bender would have gotten tired of listening to him describe things by now. "She's the toughest girl that I know. Maybe even the best fighter I know."

"She's got a wicked sense of humor." He tugged on Toph's shoulder slightly, gently guiding her around a large rock. "And her personality all out rocks." That pun, however, did earn a snicker from him. "And she's beautiful. Just...It's hard to describe her."

Another lapse of silence, this one carrying over a heavier feeling. "Have I met her before?" Toph's voice was quiet, her pale lavender eyes locked onto the ground as though she could actually see and was trying to pick out the safest and least painful route for her to take.

"Yeah. Yeah, you've met her." A smile and he slowed them both to a walk. "You wanna know who she is, right?"

Toph didn't answer him this time. Instead she gave a small, barely there nod.

"Well...She used to be the champion in Earth Rumble Seven and now she's the worlds greatest Earth Bender...And...Well...She's you." He tilted his head down slightly, pressing his lips against the shorter girls forehead.

Toph's breath caught in her throat. She could feel the blood rushing to her cheeks and ears in a blush. Her heart, thumping a mile a second, shot up into her throat, choking her. Did he just do...and...say...

"Me?" She whispered, voice barely loud enough for him to hear.

"You." Sokka told her, voice strong and steady. "I'm talking about you."

The Earth-Bender tightened her grip around Sokka's waist and, instead of walking at arms-length like she had been, pulled herself closer so she could rest her head against his side.

Toph didn't see how she could compare to the spirit of the moon and Suki and all those other pretty girls that Sokka had seen but, if the Water-Tribe boy was willing to be delusional, she'd let him be. "I guess you're a pretty good warrior too, Snoozles."

**THE END**


End file.
